Now this is what we were hoping for from Thunderbolt. LaCie just stuck a Thunderbolt port on its USB 3.0 Rugged series of external drives, meaning it's now a tiny, indestructible speed monster.

LaCie is claiming that the fully bus-powered Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt Series is the fastest mobile storage. We want to get our hands on it in person before agreeing, but it's just nice to see impressive Thunderbolt stuff finally coming out.

The claimed top end speeds are certainly impressive:

The LaCie Rugged SSD delivers record-breaking speeds up to 380MB/s – making it the fastest bus-powered product ever. Respectively, the hard disk version performs up to 110MB/s, a 35 percent improvement over FireWire 800.

The 256GB SSD version is $350, but listed as out of stock right now. The 120GB SATA6Gbit/s SSD is $200, and the 1TB 5400rpm drive is $250. [LaCie]